by P. N. Elrod
Blocking her path, I called again, my hands palm out and angled down the way you do to calm a spooked animal. She stopped as abruptly as she’d started, gaping at me. She looked crazy, but fear can do that to you.
“Who…?” was all she gasped. She didn’t have enough breath to finish the question.
“My name’s Jack. Can I help?” I spread my empty hands, trying to look harmless. It seemed to work; she took a half step toward me with an expression like a lost soul who’d just gotten a reprieve from hell. Then a small, hopeless shriek twisted her mouth and made it ugly.
What the—
In utter silence she and the rest of the beach flared into a blaze of hot silver light. The earth bucked once as though to get rid of me and damn near succeeded; I sprawled on its lurching surface.
My hearing swooped back. There was a grunt that might have come from me as I hit the ground, I wasn’t sure.
The silver light focused down to an excruciating spot on the back of my skull, pinning me to the sand.
She screamed again, full-throated, anguished. Behind and above me, a man snarled at her to shut up.
“Move, you dumb bitch!” There was raw venom in his tone.
Footfalls, clumsy in the sand. Fading.
He turned me over, cursing under his breath the way other people nervously whistle. He was big and young with a tough jaw in a lean, jaded face. He wore an red plaid hunting jacket and hat that weren’t enough to protect him from this kind of cold, but were more than the girl had on.
I’d been struck by wood, recognizing its vivid agony all too well. If he’d hit me with something metal or a rock, I wouldn’t be lying paralyzed at his feet, but he’d used wood—probably the stock of the rifle he carried. While I’d been concentrating on the girl, he’d slipped up behind and—
Mugs unused to dishing out violence hit too hard or not hard enough. This large lad slammed down with enough force to kill an ordinary man and yet seemed surprised by the results. My fixed and staring gaze alarmed him.
He didn’t know I was different, still awake and aware.
With his teeth, he tore off a glove to feel for a pulse in my neck and swore again when he couldn’t find one. I wanted to swear, too. Pain is always worse when you can’t give it verbal expression. My head hurt like New Year’s morning in hell. Jesus, what had I done to deserve this?
I’d recover. Eventually. Being a night-stalking blood-drinking vampire had some advantages, and healing fast was one of them. Before dawn came this idiot was in for the shock of his life.
Only he wasn’t hanging around. The bastard took off, not after the girl, but up toward the road. I moaned inwardly with disgust and tried to move.
Silver light lanced through my brain. Molten pain on the back of my head swelled, threatening to open my skull.
Too soon. Much too soon.
The wind plucked sand from my cheeks; some grains lodged in my eyes. I couldn’t even blink. Shit…that burned. Tears clouded my vision, trickling past my temples into my hair; I imagined threads of ice clinging to my skin.
There was nothing I could do until the shock wore off. I’d have to wait it out, unpleasant but—
The man returned. First I heard the air rasping in his throat, then his awkward, irregular footfalls as he came down the rise from the road. He must still have the rifle; its weight would throw off his balance. I picked up the sound of another person with him.
“Here,” he said. “He’s right here.” His voice was high and taut with near-panic. They reached the bottom, stopping a few paces outside my field of view. The bright beam of a flashlight played erratically over me.
“Give me that thing,” ordered the newcomer. A woman. She had a more mature voice than the girl I’d encountered. The light jumped as it transferred to a more steady hand.
“I think he’s dead,” the man told her unhappily.
“Shut up, Lloyd. Cover him,” she said.
The woman drew near, cautiously, as though my apparently final stillness might somehow be catching. After a moment she knelt within my limited range, though I couldn’t focus well because of the sand and tears. She had the same general look as the man, big and tough. Family resemblance, I thought, the hard jaw softer, but just as distinct. She wore a heavy cloth coat with a fur collar, with a thick scarf tied firmly under her chin. Her expression was as cold as the wind booming off the lake.
She stretched out a hand as though to caress my face. Her fingertips brushed at the tear tracks from my smarting eyes. I wanted to flinch away, but could not. She aimed the flashlight’s beam into them again, blinding me.
“Ellie?” His voice was thin. “Is he…?”
She sought the big vein in my throat, pressing hard. My heart beat its last months ago, churning wildly in a final berserk denial of fate before a bullet ripped through it and stopped everything, changed everything.
Ellie withdrew after a few seconds, then worked on the buttons of my overcoat.
“What’re you doing?” Lloyd demanded.
A question I might reasonably ask if I’d not guessed. She opened the coat wide and pawed at the clothes beneath. Her head ducked from my dazzled view and lay heavily on my chest, ear flat to my cold skin. She listened for what seemed an excessively long time before straightening.
“You killed him,” she concluded. She sounded matter-of-fact, and I wondered at her choice of words. She could have used a more neutral, “He’s dead,” but had chosen to keep the blame squarely on Lloyd.
He was anything but contrite, to judge by his language. “What’ll we do?”
“We don’t do anything.”
“But he’s dead.”
“You wanta call a cop?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, so think about it. That’s probably his car up there off the road. When someone finds him, they’ll figure he stopped to pee, slipped on something, and cracked his head. There’s nothing to tie him to what we’re doing.”
“But what about Susan?”
“We go on as before. This could be the last winter storm, we have to use it and finish the job.”
“But this guy, suppose the cops—”
“Lloyd, shut the hell up. There’s nothing between us and him. He slipped on a rock in the wrong place.”
“But—”
“We don’t need no witness.”
“El—”
“You did the right thing when you hit him.”
Like hell, I thought through the pain.
“Now pull yourself together and g—”
“Will you listen to me?” he roared. That bought him a moment. “One body on a beach is one thing, but two on the same beach and the cops will know something’s wrong. They won’t buy two accidents the same night in the same place, dammit.”
Ellie must have thought it through. “Okay, I can see that. You got me nervous with all your jumpin’ around, so it’s hard to think clear. You settle down, and I’ll figure out what to do.”
“I know what to do. We put him in that car and drive him some other place.”
“Drive him where?”
“Don’t matter. Why’s he out here, anyway?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“Did he follow us from the bar? A couple guys were givin’ you the eye.”
“He wasn’t any of them,” said Ellie. She snapped off the flashlight. “No one there was this fancy.”
“That’s a nice coat he’s got.” He bent to finger my lapels.
She slapped his hand away. “Get it later.”
Grunting, he bent to grab my ankles.
“I can do that,” she said. “Go find that idiot wife of yours.”
“What?”
“Go get Susan before she runs into somebody else!”
Evidently used to taking orders, Lloyd loped away. Ellie glared down at me with scowling displeasure.
She possessed a big, hearty body, strong enough to drag me over the sand and up to the road. With effort she might
even hoist me into the car.
She leaned closer; more of her face came into swimming focus: wide-set eyes, narrow nose, shapely lips parted enough to show the edges of her teeth. If she noticed this dead man was making involuntary tears I was a goner. I couldn’t take another slam in the skull.
Her bare fingers touched my face again, cold, tickling as she lightly brushed at the sand on my cheeks.
What are you up to, lady? I wondered uncomfortably. Who gets this close to a corpse?
As though she’d heard my thought, she paused, head up for a furtive look in Lloyd’s direction. She stood, going out of my range, pacing one way, another, as though searching. Over the wind, I could hear her breath begin to quicken. Maybe a car was coming. Maybe even a cop. A cop would come in handy about now.
No such luck. She returned, kneeling close by my side. The clean line of her neck escaped her coat collar; I was aware of the blood pounding within that healthy, forceful body, the suppressed excitement. With a terrible sinking horror I abruptly understood what drove her heart to such a pitch, what inspired the intense concentration in her expression.
Her gaze dropped to me again, her eyes bright and wicked. If she’d not had a heartbeat I’d have thought she was a vampire herself working up to feeding on a dead man.
One more flick of her nail on my still face. Deliberate.
She smiled and with a deep sigh lay down on me. She stretched full length over me.
Oh, God.
I tried to recoil, to push her away, and could not move. Blinding pain shot through my skull for the effort. Ellie settled firmly into place, pulling her skirt out of the way, legs straddling me.
She licked her lips, wetting them thoroughly. Then she lowered her head. Our mouths touched, sliding over one another, cold as shards of ice on the lake. Her tongue eased in and leisurely worked against mine. It probed and curled and raked over my teeth. It forced itself deeper until I should have gagged; only I couldn’t.
I was inert flesh. Dead flesh. Safe to play with, safe to—
The probing turned to suction. She drew hard on my tongue, taking it in her mouth, sucking it like a piece of sweet fruit. She teased and nipped and pulled it out as far as she could before releasing. It dropped free, bulging as though I’d been strangled.
Her hips ground against mine, leg muscles taut with building tension, breasts rubbing my chest. I felt her warmth through our clothes and was revolted.
A soft, gasping moan escaped her; her fingers clawed my shoulders. Her teeth clamped together, turning the moan to a sharp sibilant. Then, with an exaggerated sigh, she emptied her lungs completely and her full weight collapsed on me.
Her returning breath sawed the air. Eyelids drooping, face flushed from the release, she might have been beautiful under different circumstances. With a cold fingertip, she pressed my tongue back where it belonged and kissed me again to seal my lips shut.
“We have a secret,” she whispered, ending with a strange little breathy giggle.
I wanted to vomit.
I wanted to tear things apart.
I wanted to goddamn move.
Getting off me, Ellie pulled my clothes together and buttoned my coat to make things look right. That finished, she rose, straightened her own clothes and brushed sand from her legs, peering down the beach where Lloyd had gone.
She called his name in an absolutely normal tone. I didn’t catch the reply, but she did, and must have found it exasperating. Snarling ripe language, she went after him.
Tears of rage seeped from my gritty eyes. Ellie might have at least closed them, too. Clouds, racing high above my little concerns, swam in and out of focus. The stinging eased, the sand finally washing away. Ages crawled past before I was at last able to blink. I was pathetically grateful for the progress, and at the same time despairing at how long took.
Who were these lunatics? A violator of corpses giving orders, a not too bright lug with a rifle, a half-frozen terrified girl named Susan—apparently his wife—tearing around a supposedly deserted beach at three in the morning. Lloyd and Ellie might not be intending murder, but until I found out otherwise, it seemed a solid assumption. What could the girl have done that made her death necessary?
My guess was nothing. She was some kind of inconvenience and had to be gotten rid of, and they were using the weather to do the dirty work. People always died when winter storms swept through, the cold cutting down the weak and vulnerable the same as any predator. It was no bother to me, but that poor girl wouldn’t last. She might already be gone.
My arms suddenly twitched with returning life. Muscles in my legs flexed, a promise of full recovery to come, but I couldn’t wait; I had to push things.
Awkward and queasy, I twisted onto my belly, wanting to scream. The world kept spinning after I’d stopped. Silver lights flared, full of pain. Vanishing would have instantly healed me, but it was too soon to try. I was already hovering on the edge of blacking out. Damned wood.
Blood would have helped. It always did when I was hurt. Why the hell hadn’t I stopped at the Stockyards on the way over? With my body flushed full of hot red life, the wallop I’d taken might not have affected me as much, and then that sick bitch Ellie wouldn’t have—
On the other hand, I’d have missed Susan. A moment either way and I’d be driving home, oblivious to her dying alone in the cold.
I kept seeing her walking, head down, the hope in her eyes when she saw me, that awful fear replacing it—
Come on, it’s just a bump on the noggin. You’ve had worse. Get moving.
Slowly, I bellied over the frozen sand toward the lake. Wounded animals are drawn to water. That described me well enough. Halfway there, I progressed to a crawl, but collapsed just at the shore’s edge, dizzy, half-blind, and trying not to whimper. I dipped a hand into the searing cold of free-running water and splashed the last sand from my eyes, swearing with violent sincerity. My face burned as the wind dried it, but I could see again.
Very gently, I slopped water against the swelling lump on the back of my head.
That woke me up—like a five-alarm fire with the bells going off between my ears.
I hissed at the jolt and for a long moment was in too much shock to move. The cure was worse than the injury.
A few eternities later the crippling agony abated in microscopic increments. When the ringing died down, I cautiously peered around. No sign of the others. I managed to get vertical, unsteady but it would serve.
Lloyd had payback coming. I plotted a number of destructive things once I got my hands on him. Topping the list was a new use for that damned wooden rifle stock in relation to his ass. After that, I could toss him in the lake to find out if he knew how to swim.
As for Ellie. . .
I wasn’t responsible for her bizarre appetite for private gratification, but she sure as hell could have kept it to herself.
There was a vile taint in my mouth from her kiss. It was imaginary, but I had to get rid of it.
Though absolutely unable to drink anything but blood, I stooped and swilled a huge gulp of lake water and swallowed, knowing what would happen.
The stuff struck the bottom of my gut like a sword. I took another gulp and forced it down. The sword jumped as though alive. Another drink, and it started cutting. I closed my throat off to keep it down.
The sword sliced and twisted, doubling me over with cramp. Then everything came spewing out. I’d wanted to vomit; it was this or carry along the slimy touch of Ellie’s lips forever. I needed a physical rejection of what she’d done to me.
I spat the last drops into the lake, regarding the endless stretch of shifting waves. Sky, earth, and water, ancient, but alive. A different kind of life from mine, but wise and tolerant of one man’s little troubles. I should hate this place, but couldn’t. It was too big for such nonsense.
Rubbing my mouth on my sleeve, I wiped away the last trace of Ellie.
Time to go to work.
Woozy but full of terrible purpose, I trud
ged toward higher ground, gaining enough height to check the beach. Lloyd was a small figure far, far down the northern end. He moved fast, but erratically, circling and doubling in his tracks. Ellie stood on the road in a spot where she could overlook most of the area. She had the flashlight on and helpfully stabbed its pale beam in Lloyd’s direction.
Susan was nowhere in sight. The sickening thought that she’d dropped in her tracks someplace to curl up for a last, freezing sleep kept me going.
I plodded unsteadily back to where I’d fallen. My crumpled and forgotten hat marked the spot. Punching out the dents and sand, I put myself in the girl’s place, trying to guess where she might have gone while Ellie and Lloyd had been distracted with me. How much time had that taken? Had it been enough for her to get to the road? It was something I might have tried in hope of flagging down a car or finding cover on the other side.
The city glow reflecting from the clouds was enough that Ellie might spot me crossing the road. She wouldn’t see details, but a dark figure in her peripheral view would set her off and bring Lloyd running.
Vanishing was out of the question for the present; my head buzzed painfully. I’d been through this kind of thing before. Too soon and the attempt could injure me further, even knock me unconscious.
I’d have to do things the hard way and wait for the right opportunity.
Lloyd was an unintentional help as his search for Susan took him farther along the beach. Ellie kept even with him, playing the light around. When her back was turned, I topped the rise and sprinted across. The land dipped down again on the other side, but not by much. There was no shelter, just dead grass, gravel, and snow that hadn’t melted before the latest cold front blew in. A hundred yards ahead in the middle of a flat, exposed field was a sparse stand of trees. Would Susan have tried for it? I was acutely conscious of the wasted time if I guessed wrong.
My doubts dropped away when I spotted a footprint in a patch of snow. The toe of a woman’s shoe pointed right at the trees.
